Nigerian televangelist and life coach, Apostle Gideon Odoma has claimed that 70 percent of the clerics in Nigeria are living in poverty.
He stated this on Twitter (X) in a bid to debunk the widespread belief that pastoral work is a lucrative business in the Wet African nation.
Odoma said thousands of pastors receive monthly salaries of less than N60,000, while many people wrongly mistakenly assume that prominent Pentecostal pastors and denominations represent the norm.
He wrote; “At least, 70% of pastors in Nigeria are poor. And, that’s me being conservative. Many people think that the popular Pentecostal MoGs and denominations are representative of reality. No. They are not. Do you know how much pastors of QIC, EYN, ECWA, NKST, UEC, COCIN, etc, are paid monthly? You won’t believe it if I told you.
“There are thousands, you heard right, thousands of pastors who are paid less than 60,000 Naira monthly. Sometimes, when a pastor is posted to a new station, the station renegotiates his salary downwards, like: “Sir, we know you’re on 60k, based on the church’s payment schedule, but our assembly is struggling financially, so what we can afford is 35k monthly.
“I know a case where a pastor refused the reduced offer, and he was replaced by a more ‘understanding’ pastor, while he was told to go home, till there was a church open and willing to pay him his due rate. He ended up waiting a full year before he was posted again. Man had to return to his village for a year.
“I happen to know something about how church denominations, the majority of them, operate. Most protestant churches in Nigeria are not Pentecostal, and even Pentecostalism (which has now become popular) does not pay huge salaries. Or tell, on average, what is the monthly salary of a senior Pastor in a Pentecostal church in Nigeria?
“I am tired of hearing that “pastoring is a lucrative business in Nigeria.” Even as a generalization, it is not true, because the overwhelming majority of our pastors are poor. I could say more, but for now, I won’t… my phone battery is low, because a town hall different…”
